Tag Archives: hamilton

Good luck to Aisha Mir tomorrow

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 4th June 2025 - 8:59 am

Tomorrow, there is a Scottish Parliament by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse which was caused by the very sad death of the wonderful SNP MSP Christine McKelvie in March.

Our candidate is my brilliant friend Aisha Mir who had done such a great job of representing the party in challenging circumstances.

Reform is throwing the kitchen sink at this campaign. Nigel Farage, again being anywhere but Clacton, came to visit earlier this week. Christine Jardine, our Scottish Affairs spokesperson, criticised him for avoiding the media during his brief visit, though I could have lived my life quite happily without the image conjured up by her first sentence:

Once again Nigel Farage is all talk and no trousers.

He’s run away rather than face the press or the voters of Hamilton.

This is just a taste of how Nigel Farage lets down everyone who ever trusts him.

There are a lot of people are frustrated that they have been let down by the SNP, Conservatives and Labour but it’s the Liberal Democrats who are offering real change, not Reform. Farage doesn’t care about getting you swift access to a local GP or dentist. We do.

Aisha on the other hand has been doing lots of media. She did an outstanding interview on Good Morning Scotland (here, from about 1 hour 38 in) in which she highlighted her own personal, very recent, experience as a carer for her mum who died recently and talked about how we had the solutions while the likes of Reform only sowed division. She rightly described their recent attack video of Labour leader Anas Sarwar as “scummy tactics.”

Posted in News | Also tagged aisha mir, larkhall and stonehouse, Scotland and scottish parliament by-elections | 5 Comments

“Those bloody Liberal Democrats are in town”

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 24th February 2019 - 8:45 am

The main hall in the Town House in the South Lanarkshire Town of Hamilton was the room where it happened this weekend (see what I did there?). The song from the musical Hamilton tells us to “Talk less, smile more” but there was actually a lot of both this weekend as Scottish Liberal Democrats gathered for Conference.

I have to admit, I was sceptical about this new venue and the hour I spent dragging my suitcase round empty streets in the dark on Thursday night trying to find the hotel did not improve my mood.

One of our number overhead in the ASDA across the road from the conference hotel “Those bloody Liberal Democrats are in town this weekend.”

However, the Town House is a lovely building, even more so when lit up purple by LGBT Youth Scotland for Purple Friday, the last Friday of LGBT History Month. The staff there and in the Town House were so friendly and helpful.

We had some intense debates over the weekend. I actually ended up making five speeches, which is unheard of. I had planned to do three – I was proposing a motion on providing better housing support for victims of domestic abuse, summating the Scottish Young Liberals’ motion on trans rights and I’d hoped to be called in the debate on sex work.

I ended up also speaking about the problems people face with housing and the social security system when they leave prison and proposing the constitutional amendment which would allow the implementation of the new disciplinary process in Scotland.

The latter struck true terror into my heart. It meant going up against Scotland’s wonderful constitutional guru, John Lawrie who had concerns that we were giving too much power to the Federal Party. Actually, Sheila had cannily drafted the amendment so that we retain the power and delegate the functions so covering all our bases.

As persistent troublemaker (in the best possible way) Richard Coxon said in his speech, two inalienable truths of the Scottish Party are that Sheila Ritchie (the convener who wrote the amendment) is always right. And John Lawrie is always right. The party dealt with the conflict in Sheila’s favour this time.

One of my best highlights was the look of utter surprise and mild irritation on Sheila’s face when she won the Scottish Lib Dem Women’s award for the person who had done most to advance diversity. She has become a real driving force for the implementation of the Alderdice Review, showing local parties how to engage more with BAME people and get them involved in the party. She absolutely deserved the accolade. The SLDW AGM, by the way, decided to name the award after Helen Watt, who devoted so much time to the organisation until her far too early death in 2016.

I shall tell you more about the weekend in the next few days, but the agenda was absolutely packed with things that actually provoked debate. An attempt to overturn our policy on decriminalising sex work and replace it with the controversial Nordic model was unsuccessful, but the summating speech in favour of the motion affected everyone, whichever side of the debate you were on.

Diane Martin, who experienced the most awful treatment by exploitative pimps and ended up being trafficked for sex work, described her horrendous experience in an incredibly moving way. There was shock as she told how she was raped by a man with a gun who told her he was having a “freebie.” Diane won the award for the best speech of the Conference.